The Border Gateway

Protocol (BGP)
Sharad Jaiswal
 Prologue
• Internet is divided into
Autonomous Systems (ASs)
• AS - a collection of one or more
networks under a single
technical administration
• technical administration- refers
to aspects of the n/w like, routing
policies etc.
 Contd.

• Intra-AS routing driven mostly

by performance considerations
• Inter-AS routing depends on
policy issues, economics etc
 BGP (basic info)
• BGP is the de facto Inter-AS
routing protocol
• Used for exchanging route
information between ASs
• Conveys information about AS
path topology
 BGP (basic info contd.)
• Current version, BGP 4, defined
in RFC 1771
• Runs over TCP (port 179)
• Path Vector protocol
– Exchange entire path information
– Prevents loops
• Incremental
 How does BGP work?
• How is it configured?
• How is route information
exchanged using BGP?
• What are the attributes of the
exchanged routes?
• How is this information
processed? And further
distributed?
 BGP Configuration
• Identify BGP “speakers”, assign
AS number and define neighbors
(peers)
• External BGP peers are directly
connected
• Not necessary for Internal BGP
peers
BGP Message Exchange

• BGP peers form a TCP connection,

use the OPEN message to
establish BGP connection;
• Connections kept open by
KEEPALIVE messages;
• Initially exchange routing table,
further modifications are
incremental;
BGP Message Exchange
(II)
• Modifications (Route additions
and withdrawls) are made by
UPDATE messages;
• Errors are reported by
NOTIFICATION messages;
• Most interesting stuff happens in
the processing of UPDATE
messages.
 The UPDATE message
• Used to transfer routing
information between peers
• Advertise new routes, withdraw
unfeasible paths
• Contains Path Attributes info
 Routing Information
Storage
• Adj-RIBs-In
– Store messages that have been learned
from inbound UPDATE messages
• Loc-RIB
– Contains local routing information of a
BGP speaker
• Adj-RIBs-Out
– Store routing information local router
has chosen for distribution
 Path Attributes
• Origin
– defines the origin of a path
• AS_PATH
• NEXT_HOP
• MULTI_EXIT_DISC
• LOCAL_PREF
• Community
Composed of a sequence of AS path
segments or the set of ASs traversed
IP address of the Border router that should
be used for the next stop
Used to inform other BGP speakers in the
same AS about preferences for a particular
Used to discriminate among multiple exit
points in neighboring ASs
 Community Attribute
• Optional Attribute
• Method to group destination in a
certain community
• Range 0, 4294,967,200
• Apply routing destinations
(accept,prefer,redistribute)
using these communities
 Decision Process
• Phase I
– Calculating the degree of preference
for each route
• Phase II
– Choosing the best route and installing
it into Loc-RIB
• Phase III
– dissemination,route aggregation and
information reduction
 Applying Policy in the
Decision Process
• Policy based on AS path,
community information
• Accept / Reject routes
• Set Attributes to influence path
selection
 Phase I
• For each received update, local
speaker shall calculate the degree of
preference
• Degree of preference calculated
based on the LOCAL_PREF attribute
if received from within AS
• Calculated from pre-configured
policy information if received from
neighboring AS
 Phase 2

• Route selection
– highest degree of preference of
any route to to the same set of
destinations
– is only route to the destination
– use tie breaking techniques
• Install route in Loc-RIB
 Phase 3
• Route Dissemination to peers in
neighboring ASs
– when routes in a Loc-RIB to local
destinations have changed
• All routes processed in Adj-RIBs-
OUT
• Aggregation of routes may occur
here
 Overlapping Routes
• BGP speaker may transmit routes
with overlapping NLRI Information
• Overlap occurs when a set of
destinations are identified in non-
matching routes
• Destinations are always identified by
IP prefixes
• More specific prefix route gets
precedence.
 Internal BGP (iBGP)
• Same protocol as BGP;
• Used when AS_PATH is
supposed to be intact between
different eBGP peers;
• iBGP nodes are fully meshed;
• No re-advertisement of route
updates to prevent looping;
 iBGP Scaling
• BGP Confederations
– Divide AS into Sub-ASs to reduce size of
mesh
– Still present a unified front to the outside
world
• Route Reflectors
– Relax no re-advertisement rule
– Single iBGP peer reflects routes to sub-
ordinate peers within a cluster
– No peering between clusters
 Other Issues!
• Achieving Stability
– Using loopbacks
– BGP/IGP interaction
– Peer Groups
– Route Flap dampening
• BGP and CIDR